Development of the coupled 3D neutron kinetics/thermal-hydraulics code DYN3D-HTR for the simulation of transients in block-type HTGR

Abstract

The Light Water Reactor (LWR) dynamics code DYN3D is extended and adopted for the application to block-type High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor (HTGR). A procedure for the cross section generation for the HTGR core calculations was developed. The modified Reactivity-Equivalent Physical Transformation (RPT) approach is applied in order to eliminate the double-heterogeneity of HTGR fuel elements in the deterministic lattice calculations. A full core analysis of the reference simplified HTGR core is performed with DYN3D using macroscopic nodal cross sections provided by HELIOS. The SP3 transport approximation is integrated into the multi-group DYN3D code to take anisotropy of the neutron flux and heterogeneity of the core more precisely into account. The SP3 method was developed for hexagonal geometry of the graphite blocks, where the hexagons are subdivided into triangular nodes. A 3D heat conduction module coupled with a channel-type coolant flow model is implemented into the code. It is shown that there is significant redistribution of the produced heat by heat conduction between the graphite blocks.